While some are starting to prepare for their summer holidays, focus on road safety in Europe.
Which European countries are the least safe by car? If you are choosing in which country you will make a road trip this summer, here is some information that could be useful to you. As every year, the European Commission published at the beginning of the year its road safety report in Europe to encourage countries to improve the safety of their roads.
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In this matter, the dunce cap goes to Romania, where there were on average 86 deaths per million inhabitants in 2022. If it is the bad student of Europe on the question, the Romanian statistics are have improved since 2021, with the Commission noting an 8% drop in road deaths. At the other end of the spectrum, Sweden has 21 road deaths per million inhabitants, four times less than Romania.
20,600 people died on European roads in 2022
“Around 20,600 people lost their lives in road accidents last year”notes the European Commission. If, over one year, the European average has increased by 3% to settle at 46 road deaths in 2022 per million inhabitants, over the long term, this rate decreases.
Compared to the 2017-2019 average, road fatalities in the 27 EU countries have thus fallen by 11%. The vast majority of European countries are following this trend. “In countries such as Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, the number of road deaths has remained stable or even increased over the past three years. “writes the Commission again.
French roads, for their part, are the 13th deadliest in the EU, with a rate of 49 deaths per million inhabitants in 2022, slightly higher than the European average.
According to estimates by the National Interministerial Road Safety Observatory (ONISR), 3,267 people lost their lives on the roads of mainland France in 2022, compared to 2,944 in 2021 (+11.0%), and 3,244 in 2019 (+0.7%). The total number of injured is estimated at 236,834, down 0.9% compared to 2019, while the number of seriously injured is estimated at 15,956 people, down 1.8% compared to 2019.
Young people aged 18-24 are still among the most at risk, with 549 killed and 2,739 seriously injured in 2022 in metropolitan France among this age category.